There have been extensive
disputes over whether Confucian learning, or any other learning, in Chinese
history, constituted a religion. The definition of religion usually involves a
transcendental God and heaven and some form of negation of life, although not
necessarily so. The definition of religion in the Encyclopedia
Britannica gives perhaps the vaguest description: religion "encompasses
that to which people are most devoted or that from which they expect to get the
most fundamental satisfaction in life." The transcendental element or
negation of life is not mentioned. By this definition, arguably many
activities would be religious ones, and a habitual gambler's religion would be
gambling if he was totally involved in it heart and soul. Still, if
treated as referring to somber activities in quest of the meaning of life,
this would apply to Confucian learning and several other schools of learning in
Chinese history. As Fung Yu-lan, a prominent philosopher in 20th century
China, points out, like Socrates, Confucius was
concerned with the fundamental questions of life. But Fung denies that
Confucian learning is a religion. Fung distinguishes between philosophy
and religion. He defines philosophy as systematic reflections on life.
Although he did not define religion (Fung candidly admitted he believed in no
religion), we can infer from his writings that religion for him constituted a
way of life that did not require systematic reflections, although each religion
had a philosophical system to back it up. By his definition, Confucianism
is a philosophy, and not a religion. His definition corroborates with the
traditional definition of Confucian learning. Historically, Confucianism
was defined as a "state ethic," starting from the Han Dynasty. (See
History Timeline)

Of the
three major schools of thought in China, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism
(Taoism), although the latter two are traditionally defined as religion,
Fung points out that they have often been approached as philosophy (himself
being one example).

2.
Self-transcendence in Chinese philosophy

Even though
one may argue that philosophy has had a greater prevalence in China than
religion, Chinese philosophy shares with religion certain characteristics.
One of them is self-transcendence. Fung argues that unlike the Western
philosophical tradition as defined by Socrates that emphasized the importance of
thinking and definition of knowledge, Chinese philosophy focused on the
elevation of the mind. Thus the ultimate concern of Chinese philosophers
was ethical, not with the origin or definition of knowledge, but with how human
beings could improve themselves, to rid themselves of egocentrism and
selfishness. Philosophy was not only knowledge, but something to be experienced.
(Fung, 10) In contrast, Western philosophy was mostly concerned with
knowledge. Although Socrates in ancient Greece differentiated between
knowledge and wisdom, and decided that wisdom must also be good, in the West
knowledge in modern times has been distinguished from morality.

3.
The worldliness of Chinese philosophy:

While
Chinese philosophy tends to emphasize self-transcendence, it also tends to every
details of this world. Confucian learning is said to be a this-worldly
philosophy because it revolves around human behavior in this world, and calls
for political leadership as the highest ideal of any scholar. Daoism, on
the other hand, encourages following nature and avoiding the hustle and bustle
of this world. But even Daoism does not encourage abandoning society and
life, as some other religions do. Even though Confucius' preoccupation was
the restoration of an ideal political system, Confucius was not a pragmatist
that would employ any means to achieve his goal. He and later
schools of Confucian learning all tried to achieve worldly goals through sagely
ways, hence the Chinese phrase "sageliness within, and kingliness without," a
term somewhat similar to "the philosopher king," an ancient Roman ideal,
although by philosopher the Romans here emphasized wisdom and enlightenment, and
by sageliness the Chinese emphasized personal moral cultivation and
self-transcendence.

The goal of
Chinese philosophy, and Confucian learning in particular, was to bridge the
world of the practical and the ethical/ideal. This in part originated from
the Chinese tradition to bridge the gap between the human world and the world of
nature, which leads to the topic of:

4.
The aesthetics of Chinese philosophy:

Unlike
Western philosophy (perhaps especially modern Western philosophy) that pays
special attention to the form of knowledge (Aristotle distinguished between form
and content, and modern Western thinkers have scrutinized different types of
narratives and how these forms inform the content), Chinese philosophy has
historically taken a minimalist approach to the form of knowledge, as in the
example of Chuang-tzu: words are for holding ideas, but when one has got the
idea, one need no longer think about the words. Thus Chinese
philosophy is often suggestive, full of aphorisms and allusions, rather than
articulate. (Fung, 12) This characteristic is also reflected in Chinese
art. (Links to Chinese landscape painting:
1,
2) The Western
distinction of the form and content of knowledge comes from an early
acknowledgement of the distinction between the objective and the subjective:
hence knowledge (its content external to the human being) and its representation
by the human being (form). In China, however, there was historically an
attempt to erase the gap between the objective and subjective, form an content.
The ideal was the delivery of the content directly to one's experience, as if
there was no gap between external knowledge and the subjective human self.
The objective and the subjective were woven into a continuum. Thus
knowledge tended to be intuitive rather than definitions of concepts. It
is similar to the aesthetic experience: in the latter case the goal is also to
bridge the subjective human self with the world represented in art. Thus
when Confucius states the simple joys of life, instead of defining what
happiness in life was, he used suggestive phrases such as "doesn't it make one
joyful when a friend comes from afar?"--linking happiness of life directly with
human experience.

5.
Chinese philosophy and its environment:

Fung argues
that Chinese philosophy originated from its environment as a farming country.
In contrast to ancient Greece, a maritime region where people were often exposed
to novel and unexpected things when they traveled from island to island, the
farming community in China gave the people a more insular view of the world.
The movement of the sun and the moon and the succession of the four seasons gave
to Taoism (Daoism) the concept that when things developed to their extreme, they
would reverse, hence the characteristic Chinese would never indulge himself in
over-joy or over-grief. Farmers also, according to Fung, tend to be simple
and straightforward, hence their thinking often relies on what they could see,
and Chinese philosophy is "suggestive but not articulate" with no room for such
abstract reasoning such as whether a table one sees is real or just an idea in
one's mind. (Fung, 25) Greek cities, on the contrary, produced many merchants
who relied on abstract numbers in their commercial accounts, hence their
abstract reasoning and extensive use of deduction. (Fung, 25) The
difference between Greek and Chinese societies was also reflected in their
social organizations: the farming community in China relied largely on the clan
system as the basic social unit: family relationships constituted the most
profound social relationships. The Greek communities of merchants, on the
other hand, developed communities based on towns and not families because of the
demand of their jobs. (Fung, 25) Thus Fung tried to explain why deduction
was never a prominent part of Chinese philosophy from a sociological point of
view.

In the
following sessions, we will examine specifically various Chinese schools of
thought and how they developed and shaped Chinese thinking over the centuries.